Crusader's Cross Read Free

were refined into inert molecules of harmless matter.
    But inland from the carnival rides, the fishing jetties, and the beachfront beer joints and seafood restaurants, there was another Galveston, and another industry, that made no pretense to innocence.
    During the next two days we didn’t see Ida Durbin on the main drag or on the amusement pier or on any of the jetties, and we had no idea where she lived, either. Then, on Saturday morning, while we were in a barbershop a block from the beach, we saw her walk past the window, wearing a floppy straw hat and a print dress, with a lavender Mexican frill around the hem, a drawstring bag slung from her shoulder.
    Jimmie was out the door like a shot.
    She told him she had to buy a money order for her grandmother in Northeast Texas, that she had to pick up her mail at the post office, that she had to buy sunburn lotion for her back, that she was tied up all day and evening.
    “Tomorrow is Sunday. Everything is closed. What are you doing then?” he said, grinning.
    She looked quizzically at nothing, her mouth squeezed into a button. “I reckon I could fix some sandwiches and meet y’all at the amusement pier,” she said.
    “We’ll pick you up,” he said.
    “No, you won’t,” she replied.
    The next day we discovered a picnic with Ida Durbin meant Vienna sausage sandwiches, sliced carrots, a jar of sun tea, and three Milky Way bars.
    “Some folks don’t like Viennas,” she said, and she pronounced the word “Vy-ennas.” “But with lettuce and mayonnaise, I think they’re real good.”
    “Yeah, these are a treat. Aren’t they, Dave?” Jimmie said.
    “You bet,” I said, trying to wash down a piece of simulated sausage that was like a chunk of rubber.
    We were on the amusement pier, sitting on a wood bench in the shade of a huge outdoor movie screen. In the background I could hear pinball machines and popping sounds from a shooting gallery. Ida wore a pink skirt and a white blouse with lace on the collar; her arms and the top of her chest were powdered with strawberry freckles.
    “Dave and I go back on the quarter boat in the morning,” Jimmie said.
    She chewed on the end of a carrot stick, her eyes staring blankly at the beach and the surf sliding up on the sand.
    “We’ll be back on land in ten days,” Jimmie said.
    “That’s good. Maybe I’ll see y’all again,” she said.
    But if there was any conviction in her voice, I did not hear it. Down below, a huge wave crashed against the pilings, shuddering the planks under our feet.

CHAPTER TWO
    After the next hitch we went back to the motel where our cousin, the manager, who was confined to a wheelchair, let us stay free in return for running a few errands. For the next five days Jimmie had nothing on his mind except seeing Ida. We cruised the main drag in our convertible, night-fished on the jetties, went to a street dance in a Mexican neighborhood, and played shuffleboard in a couple of beer joints on the beach, but nobody we talked to had ever heard of Ida Durbin.
    “It’s my fault. I should have given her the motel number,” he said.
    “She’s older than us, Jimmie.”
    “So what?” he said.
    “That’s the way girls are when they’re older. They don’t want to hurt our feelings, but they got their own lives to live, like they want to be around older men, know what I mean? It’s a put-down for them to be seen with young guys,” I said.
    Wrong choice.
    “I don’t believe that at all. She wouldn’t have made sandwiches for us. You calling her a hypocrite or something?” he said.
    We went back on the quarter boat and worked a job south of Beaumont, stringing rubber cable and seismic jugs through a swamp, stepping over cottonmouths and swatting at mosquitoes that hung as thick as black gauze inside the shade. When we came off the hitch we were sick with sunburn and insect bites and spoiled food the cooks had served after the refrigeration system had failed. But as soon as we got to our